The fuckin meteorite had broken my toes, caused the girl and my cellphone to split, and worse, it had also fried my phone’s innards. I stopped to think – how did that happen? Magnetism? I looked at my watch. It was broken, but working. Radioactivity? Maybe… If that was it, it could be frying my innards, too.

And at that moment I knew I was going to die. I was only twenty-four and I was about to die. Pity.

I thought of fighting death till my last breath and all that poetic, euphemistic jazz. Then I realized that even if I were to make it out of here alive, I would still have to fight my extreme [blood]-phobia, somehow get to a payphone, call Emergency services, and hold on to ‘dear life’ until they managed to locate me – because I did not have a clue as to where I was. And even if they did find me they’d have to do so within the next few hours – because I estimated I’d be dead anyway by sunrise.

And then again, even if this miracle somehow DOES happen, there’s still the suspected radioactivity to consider. Already I could feel my DNA mutating, my genes shifting, my chromosomes doing whatever-it-is-that-they-do, my balls hurting… (Okay, so the last one wasn’t due to the radioactivity, so what?) Plus, I had nothing in my stomach – no food, no pills, nothing.

I’d once attended a camp at a cop-school when I was a kid. There was this guy with a deep baritone, and thick moustache who used to give motivtional speeches. I could clearly picture him saying, “If you are stuck in a situation, don’t panic. Do a quick S-W-O-T analysis. The solution will come to you.”

So I did a S-W-O-T analysis. This is what came out:

Strengths – Not enough to move the meteo-fuckin-rite.
Weakness – Too much and growing.
Threats – Death.
Opportunity – None, as far as I/eye could see.

No solution. Only panic setting in. Not good.

I tried other tacks as well – as many as I could remember. Scout camp, Survival camp, First day of college, Ragging, Office, Girlfriends. None worked. The last one did give me some momentary distraction, but then my balls began to hurt even more, so I decided not to get distracted – momentarily or otherwise. One thing all these ‘tacks’ definitely did was, add to the panic. Definitely NOT good.

In this entire process, what I hadn’t realized was it was almost sunrise. And my estimates had been right. Another few minutes and the first rays of the sun would pierce the horizon and I’d die a slow, painful, burning death.

In the last few minutes of my life, I thought about how ironic it all had turned out to be. Just a few months back, I was twenty-four, extremely successful, the hot-shot guy with the hot-shot car, rising up the ranks like nobody’s business. And then like any other fairy-tale, I met this hot chick, fell in love with her and we decided to get married.

So far, so good.

Now with 20/20 hindsight, I could see that the signs were there all the time. I just never noticed them. For example, she used to say, she liked me the way I was – twenty-four, young and hot-blooded. I thought she’s was being understanding & sweet. We’d meet only at night, but I attributed to her being a nymphomaniac. I even remembered having secretly thanked my stars back then!

So, when she said those fateful words, I should have realized right there and then that it would all end in disaster especially for me. I had the peculiarly extreme hematophobia, remember??

But, I did what I did, and I have no regrets about it. Especially now, that I am about to die.

They say that the best way to kill us is to drive a wooden stake through our heart, or shoot us with silver, or stuff garlic – into us or around you. I was always careful to avoid any and all of the above.

What the heck, at least I’ll die doing something my ‘new-found’ brethren would never do – watch the sun rise.
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